Essentially, Trump is being held to no standard at all as he emits an ongoing series of apparent howlers. For today, though, consider what happened when Chris Wallace tried to challenge Fiorina.

Fiorina appeared as a guest on this weekend’s Fox News Sunday. Full of pep as he started, Wallace asked about her statement at last Wednesday’s debate—her highly dramatic statement about the anti-Planned Parenthood tape.

As everyone has noted by now, Fiorina’s account of what she saw on the tape is hard to square with real facts. For unknown reasons, Wallace seemed to think that he was allowed to question her about that.

He even played tape of what she said at the debate. Then, he popped the question:

WALLACE (9/20/15): I think it's fair to say your biggest moment of the debate was when you called for the defunding of Planned Parenthood.

FIORINA (videotape): I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain. This is about the character of our nation and if we will not stand up and force President Obama to veto this bill, shame on us.

WALLACE: First of all, do you acknowledge what every fact-checker has found, that as horrific as that scene is, it was only described on the video by someone who claimed to have seen it? There is not—no actual footage of the incident that you just mentioned?

Silly boy! “Do you acknowledge what every fact-checker has found?” the experienced newsman said.

Silly, silly boy!

Does Carly acknowledge that “there is no actual footage of the incident that you mentioned?” Why would she acknowledge that? Fiorina lives in a new type of world with a whole different set of rules:

FIORINA (continuing directly): No, I don’t accept that at all. I’ve seen the footage. And I find it amazing, actually, that all these supposed fact-checkers in the mainstream media claim this doesn’t exist. They’re trying to attack the authenticity of the videotape.

I haven’t found a lot of people in the mainstream media who’ve ever watched these things. I mean, they will claim somebody watched it for them.

I will continue to dare anyone who wants to continue to fund Planned Parenthood, watch the videotapes. And anyone who wants to challenge me, first, is going to have to prove to me that they watched it.

Poor Carly! Famously, Diogenes tried to find an honest man. She’s now trying to find a fact-checker who actually watched the tape!

“I haven’t found a lot of people in the mainstream media who’ve ever watched these things,” the crazy lady improbably said to Wallace.

“I mean, they will claim somebody watched it for them,” she improbably added.

It isn’t like she isn’t willing to be challenged on what she saw on the tape! But first, a fact-checker will have to prove to her he’s actually watched the tape, probably through a statement signed by the entire Supreme Court.

We’re going to guess that Chris has never received an answer as crazy as that. Of course, had he prepared himself for the interview, he would have said this at that point:

“Well, Ms. Fiorina, I have watched the videotape, and this is what I saw..”

What are the chances that Wallace actually watched the ten-minute tape? We’ll guess the chances are somewhere between zero, Barbados and none!

Whatever! After a pause to catch his breath, this is how Wallace replied—rather, how he failed to reply:

WALLACE (continuing directly): You want to defund Planned Parenthood. So let's talk about what the organization actually does—4.4 million health services involving sexual diseases and infections, 3.5 million services in family planning, 935,000 services in cancer screening and prevention, 1.1 million other women's health services, and, yes, 327,000 abortions.

Ms. Fiorina, I understand that you want to end all abortions, but you're also willing to cut off funding for all of those HIV tests and breast exams?

She stamped her foot; he ran away. We’ll guess that Wallace hadn’t watched the tape—it’s known as “The Mika Brzezinski fail”—and that he didn’t have much to say as a result.

We’re not sure we’ve ever seen anyone evade a fact-check in quite the way Fiorina succeeded with. Basically, we’re living in the Wild West as this pseudo-campaign takes its form.

When the crazies start making their ludicrous claims, it no longer seems to matter what they say. Mika has been most heinous of all at the blatant refusal to serve, but others aren’t far behind.

Tomorrow: Chuck Todd rolls over for Trump

What isn’t said on the tape: If you want to watch the ten-minute tape, you can just click here. The footage which Fiorina pretended to describe appears at the six-minute mark.

We’ve watched the tape again today. Please note:

A young woman named Holly O’Donnell makes the claims in question. She is describing something she says she saw and did.

40 comments:

"If O’Donnell had mentioned Planned Parenthood..." it would be everywhere!

and

IF the footage Fiorina falsely claims she watched EVEN EXISTED, it would be EVERYWHERE!

and

IF there were footage with Planned Parenthood involvement where you could "watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain" -- if that footage really existed, you couldn't avoid knowing about it, so incessant would be the drumbeat.

I would settle for: "I gather from your remarks, you are in favor of CRIMINALIZING abortion. How do you see that working in terms of penalty, will both the woman and her doctor be liable for a murder charge? "

Attempt to shift the debate all you like to criminal penalties but you aren't changing the fact that homicide is committed against a healthy young and helpless human being in the vast majority of abortions.

Homicide is defined by our society and it does not consider abortion to be homicide. It considers it to be a medical procedure. Otherwise, when one twin absorbs the other in utero prior to birth you'd have to call it fratricide and you'd have to call every spontaneous miscarriage suicide. This reasoning makes no sense.

It's hard to prove a negative. Bob says the image Fiorina described is not the in 10-minute segment that he watched. But, did Fiorina ever say that the evidence was in this specific 10-minute segment? If she didn't specify where the kicking baby was shown, then someone would have to watch the entirity of every tape to be sure that this image wasn't somewhere in any one of the tapes.

I saw you murdering a baby for its brain, on video tape -- you wanted to eat its living brain, you said.

Someone will have to watch the entirety [that's how you spell that word!] of every tape to be sure that image (sic) isn't somewhere on any one of the many tapes I might be talking about. If you didn't see it, you just weren't watching the tape I saw.

IOW, it's outlandish bullshit that Fiorino is spewing: The onus is on her to prove she's not a liar, not on the rest of humanity to prove that there's no video anywhere showing her insane bullshit vision really happened.

If you say you saw unicorns -- ON VIDEO! -- it's not my job to prove no video anywhere has unicorns romping.

Any reasonable person will prejudge that you are a liar or a fantasist.

The older I get the more I realize that people talk over each other using different interpretations of semantics all the time. I'm not wise enough (yet) to figure out if this is intentional or not but most people aren't as diligent with their language as a lawyer might be, especially in an off the cuff debate.

This is what she said at the debate:"I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain. This is about the character of our nation and if we will not stand up and force President Obama to veto this bill, shame on us."

I just watched the tape and understand what the media is calling Carly out for. O'Donnell was not discussing that particular baby, they were using some sort of stock footage. Matthews calls her out on this and she flat out refuses that premise, which she is absolutely wrong about.

Here's what gets me, why not just play the tape with her there and parse the language? Maybe you could get her to admit, "Oh yeah, I misspoke and she wasn't referring to the baby in the stock footage. I should have said "Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone describes an encounter with a similar fetus and wanting to keep it alive in order to harvest its brains. Thanks for showing me my error and allowing me to clarify, Chris."

Why not? Because it would make Planned Parenthood look terrible. Sure, it would show that Fiorina made a mistake by conflating a statement at one point with an unrelated image somewhere else. But, many viewers would focus more on the content of the statement. It describe PP doing something many viewers would find appalling. (BTW I don't doubt the accusations against PP but I don't care. Ms. J in C and I have been donating to PP for decades and have no intention of stopping.)

DiC, you need to play the talmudic game brother. It was NOT PP or a PP ex employee saying that. RATHER it was merely an ex employee of a company that PP contracted with to sell fetus parts to or whatever. One of the primary rules of obfuscation is that of complicated corporate relationships and details. It is an easy game to play, but the pleasures of beating them at their own game are short lived. They'll forget tomorrow that they ever conceded a point.

9:08, you're right. Nevertheless if that tape were played on mainstream TV, I think most viewers would assume that PP does do the things described, even though that particular speaker wasn't specifically representing PP.

cbd -- I can understand why you choose to disbelieve O'Keefe. That's typical tribalism. But, it seems extreme for you to be so proud of your disbelief and to abominate anyone who doesn't share your disbelief.

this 6:00 and 7:37 with a follow up, just got done eating. i'm not a pro lifer by any means but why is the media not just linking to the video like somerby did or outright play it on TV and call her out on this bullshit. it is a video, what TV does IS VIDEO. If you want to call her on her bullshit, JUST PLAY THE VIDEO. What is stopping you???? Why allude to this mysterious video, free for anyone to play. Just show the goddamn thing and call her on her bullshit.

What they say is the image is so distasteful and upsetting that they won't show it on TV. No one has established the provenance of that scene. I have seen it reported that this was a video of a miscarriage. And obviously it has nothing to do with PP. But of course this is all academic. She accomplished her mission, knowing there is a large segment of our voting public that are willing to believe any hideous horrible unproven thing they say about.

You do know of course that Ms. Fiorina's campaign is a total fraud. Her supposed rivals are giving large sums of money to her campaign, for example Ted Cruz. Her only role here is to be an attack dog on Hillary Clinton.

Also, her campaign is lock stock and barrel being guided and supported illegally by a SuperPac, called "Carly For America."That's no joke.

***********Anyway, down at the Federal Election Commission, somebody came out of their klonopin coma long enough to notice that Fiorina's SuperPac was called "Carly For America." This person also noticed that Fiorina's campaign seemed to be doing no actual campaigning, but that the SuperPac was doing a lot of the nuts-and-bolts that a campaign usually does. Hey, said the person from the FEC, this doesn't look right, speaking softly so as not to awaken the other watchdogs.

No, he was told. Carly For America and the Fiorina campaign were separate things. (You got your SuperPac in my campaign! No, you got your campaign on my SuperPac!) The way that you know this is that, in the SuperPac's name, "Carly" stood for "Con­ser­vat­ive, Au­then­t­ic, Re­spons­ive Lead­er­ship For You."************http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a37891/carly-fiorina-super-pac/

I would have more appreciation for the argument that "the image is so distasteful and upsetting that they won't show it on TV" if not for the fact that TV news is hardly squeamish or moral in what they'll play on air. For a recent example, how many times do you think the Roanoke shooting was replayed on air? One example can be seen right here, albeit from a local news channel:

I could not find clips of any of the cable news stations doing so, but if I recall they had no qualms about it either. But a 10 second clip of a fetus breathing out of the womb is beyond the pale? Please. If they wanted to disprove Carly they could in a "heartbeat", but they won't for a myriad of other reasons, of which I'll let you readers reach your own conclusion.

As to your Carly superpac rant, yeah fuck that bitch. No arguments here brother. I don't give a shit about Carly or abortion for that matter, but let us be serious about what a farce the media is.

Yes because the central issue here is whether there are pictures of a human being kicking her legs on a table instead of having her skull crushed moments before and organ preserved for maximum profit while kicking her legs inside his mother's body. Florina's point is well taken and whether or not we can "see" the butchery take place on video is of no importance.

There is no shortage of broadcast TV surgeries that include blood and aspects some would consider difficult to watch. Why not abortions? Because if we showed what happens millions of times every year in America people might develop an appreciation of the truth of living human beings, not "tissue," being deliberately and unnecessarily killed, and be forced to confront their consciences that otherwise are unchallenged because of the ability to easily avert one's eyes. That is the last thing the immoral #shoutyourabortion left wants.

Unnecessarily? That is clearly your opinion. However, your opinion ends where my body begins. Morally, I get to decide what happens there. If this were truly about human beings, you would be shouting about the truly terrible things that are happening right now to actual (non-fetus) human beings and leave my body alone.

If they showed cadavers and autopsies routinely on TV, would it increase people's abhorrence of death, rally people against murder and increase funding for disease research, or would it desensitize them? These images tend to evoke strong emotional responses that skew decision-making in difficult situations.

If people were asked to watch the surgery they are about to undergo, far more would never have that surgery, despite it being necessary to restore health. The question isn't whether watching abortion, or execution, or autopsy, or surgery should occur. It is whether the aims of those procedures are important. Focusing on the mechanics of life-and-death procedures interferes with sound decision-making.

People used to argue that autopsy should not be permitted (for religious reasons). People still argue that executions should not be permitted (for moral reasons). There are some who believe that surgery should not be permitted (religious reasons again). Abortion is no different than these other situations -- some believe it should not be permitted while others believe it should.

Any surgery is potentially life-threatening yet we allow the person undergoing that surgery to decide whether to risk his or her life or not. Abortion is a surgical procedure with 100% risk to the fetus (if done properly). Why is this not the decision of the person undergoing the surgery (or medical procedure) within the constraints imposed by our society? Why do people think they can impose their religious beliefs on others, in this situation but not in situations of autopsy or execution or other forms of surgery? Why is the confrontation of conscience and realization of risk and consequence experienced by every woman who has an abortion insufficient for the religious zealots who wish to impose their will on women? It has nothing to do with whether we avert our eyes or not.

@1:24 Abortion is 100% life-threatening and life-ending to the human being who is ordered killed by her mother. You can carefully avoid acknowledging the humanity of the human being who is killed by her mother and a doctor by selecting age-defining terms like "fetus" and subjective legal terms like "person" but in no valuable moral code does a human being's age or how he is regarded by others subjectively become important in whether or not he may be morally killed by his mother for financial or lifestyle reasons.

1:12 the existence of a legal right to abortion does not establish that it is a moral or ethical act. There are competing rights for the human living within the mother and the mother. Arguments can be made for and against the mother's right not to offer her body for use by the other human being's survival.

In the vast majority of cases it is not a moral or ethical decision for a mother to decide to kill the human being she created so that she may be spared the physical burden of ensuring his or her eventual physically independent survival.

If you believe opposition to abortion must be religiously-based you are not intelligent or educated enough to be debating the issue with adults. Non-religious arguments against abortion are stronger than religious.

Prior to Roe v Wade, abortion was a crime in most states, but was not categorized as murder. In spite of that, there were a lot of abortions, but often of the back alley sort, or self--induced, where the health of the mother was jeopardized. When we say how old we are, the starting point is when we were born, not conceived. A miscarriage is a sad event, but generally not on the level of the death of a child that has been born. What about the morning after pill? Why is it worse to kill live, conscious animals, or use them for medical experiments, than to abort a human foetus, that hasn't been born and is less conscious than animals that are hunted for pleasure or slaughtered for human's nourishment?

@1:12 right on cue with the fallacy of relative privation. "Other things happen to human beings so the fact that their parents kill them is not so bad." The fact that parents kill healthy human beings they produce might be the worst thing that humans commit against another or the worst thing that can happen to a human. Deflection FAIL.

Everyone can't see the forest through the trees. So much outrage over planned parenthood's role in this. where is the similar outrage against the women who are choosing to have the abortion, or the company that is willing to traffic in the resulting tissues, or the researchers that buy the tissue? Aren't all equally culpable? If you ask me, this is a great example of capitalism at its finest. There is a demand for a product - by god let's make the process efficient and maximize profits.

An important (and potentially disturbing) issue has been brought to our attention, and rather than have an intelligent, informed debate about it, the good ol' politicians, media, and keyboard warriors turn it into a tribal circus, cloud the real issues with semantics and minutia, and ensure that either nothing happens or that there is such an over reaction that the remedy might be worse than the status quo (like defunding planned parenthood to the point that it no longer can provide beneficial services (like its work with family planning and STDs).